The Age of Revolution: Europe from the Reign of Terror to the First World War - MHIS221

How did the eighteenth-century dream of a more enlightened, rational society end with the bloodbath of the French Revolution? How was Europe reconstructed after Napoleon’s continent-wide dictatorship? Why did this effort also, eventually, end in the horror is war? This unit explores such questions, tracing the revolutionary effects of Europe’s experimentation with democracy, its discovery of fossil-fuel efficiencies, and its efforts to rethink the place of religion, women, the poor, and much else in society. The European nineteenth century witnessed the rise of what would later appear pillars of modernity, including left-right politics, nationalism, and secular science. It also, however, produced the very things that would threaten it from the inside out: an overweening sense of racial superiority and various forms of political and cultural extremism.